title: The diagnostic accuracy of two tense measures for identifying 3-year-olds with language impairment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The authors of this study investigated the diagnostic accuracy of the Finite Verb Morphology Composite (FVMC; Bedore & Leonard, 1998) and the Tense and Agreement Productivity Score (TAPS; Hadley & Short, 2005) in identifying 3-year-olds with language impairment (LI).
  
  
  METHODS
  Eighteen pairs of 3-year-olds with and without LI participated in the current study. The FVMC and the TAPS were computed from 100- and 50-utterance language samples.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The FVMC and TAPS demonstrated higher diagnostic accuracy in the 100-utterance samples than in the 50-utterance samples. For 100-utterance samples, when children's age or severity was not considered, the FVMC showed a slight advantage over the TAPS in diagnostic accuracy. However, when children's age or severity was considered, the opposite pattern was observed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Both the FVMC and TAPS can be used to differentiate 3-year-olds with and without LI. To reliably identify 3-year-olds with LI by using tense measures, language samples with at least 100 utterances are recommended.
authors.forename: Ling-Yu
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Sarita
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eisenberg
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012660:Semantics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013066:Speech-Language Pathology / Q000379:methods*; D014825:Vocabulary